Everyone wants to make money. Most ways to make huge amounts of money are hard such as starting a successful business or getting a stressful high-paying job. People who look for relatively effortless ways to make money turn to investing. There are a lot of investment vehicles out there, and some are better than others. The best performing asset as of 2020 is cryptocurrency. The most well-known cryptocurrency is Bitcoin.
In the Philippines, not a lot of people trade nor invest in cryptocurrency. There aren't a lot of investors nor traders in the stock market neither but there are definitely more Filipinos who've dabbled in the stock market compared to cryptocurrency. So what's stopping Filipinos from taking a shot at the best performing asset of the year?
1. The Concept
Crytpocurrency, Blockchain, and Bitcoin are all still alien terms to the Filipino salaryman. They still don't understand what a decentralized public ledger means. Investing in gold is unusual in the Philippines, so it's hard for them to wrap their heads around the idea that Bitcoin is the new gold either. Cryptocurrency is hardly ever talked about in the local news, so the public never really learns about the important updates going on with the blockchain system such as forks. The news doesn't even talk about the wild fluctuations in price that Bitcoin goes through, so investor and trader interest doesn't grow in the country at all.
2. The Steps
Investing in cryptocurrency in the Philippines is complicated work. It's not the most difficult thing ever but there are a lot of hurdles to go through if you want to own some bitcoin. It's not as simple as buying stocks wherein you just set up an account at an online broker and click buy or sell on a website. Buying cryptocurrency involves moving money through digital wallets around a lot, and there are several tedious security checks to deal with. Buying bitcoin presents a steep learning curve that requires some tech literacy and the ability to follow multiple step-by-step instructions.
I believe that the concept can be overcome so long as the Filipino strives to educate themselves on the topic. Having more resources readily available for the Filipino to reach can prove immensely helpful in this regard. I also believe that the steps can be mastered with some perseverance because once you understand the concept, you know the steps are ultimately worth it, but at the same time developers simplyfing the steps to buying cryptocurrency will also make investing in bitcoin more of a possibility for a large number of Filipinos.
